There was a question on the class feedback threads – what quality of life improvements would you like to see? – that I quite liked. My only complaint is that it was class-specific, not general.

So, here’s my non-warlock list.

1. Bring back the city portals. In an effort to get everyone out to see the world, removing the city portals concentrated everyone in SW and Org. No, not concentrated – isolated. Most toons don’t leave the city. (Corollary: give mages a wider variety of ports.)

2. Allow people to change their RealID names. Learn from Facebook and Google+; people want the features of RealID without divulging personal info. This is still an issue, even if the forums don’t require it.

3. Clickable fishing poles. This is a small thing, but it screws up new players all the time. Most items are click-to-use, but not poles, and not ranged/thrown, for that matter. Having to find the ability is jarring.

4. Publish your Macro API and keep it up to date. Include basic tutorials in-game for making /startattack macros to streamline early play. Stop breaking my focus macros! :)

5. Cross-server heirlooms. Seriously, I could fill a list with this one entry. The inability to send heirlooms around really dampens playing on different servers with friends. If this is too big of a problem to solve, consider controllable XP buffs instead – you “unlock” certain tiers of XP gain that can be toggled on and off for a fee, just like the Experience Eliminators. Divorce the XP boost from the gear.

14 responses to “Five Quality of Life Improvements I’d Like to See in WoW”

So agree with all these but particularly (3). Each time I get a wand I forget how to use it & the same with fishing! And I have done it before so I really should remember! For brand new players it is completely counter intuitive.

All of these are absolutely great. I hate seeing SW as overcrowded as it is – and that there’s nobody in IF. Hell, could Darnassus get some love, just once?I’d also like to see AoE looting. Having gotten used to it in Rift, I greatly miss it when playing WoW.

So agree with you. These are sensible, easy ways to make the game more playable. It would be nice to have people hanging at more that SW and ORG. It would be great to have portals to remote places for exploration. And the heirloom thing? Can’t agree with you MORE on that!

your corollary to #1 was what i put in my feedback comment on the official forums for mages: i think they should let mages be able to learn/unlearn a finite number of ports (10? 15? 20?) for places we’ve been to. make it cost us gold each time, like reforging or whatever. but then we could have ports to all sorts of places that we could offer to everyone. it would be so helpful to the mage and to the in-game community.

If not city portals, let’s at least proliferate the SW/Org features to the other cities. Shouldn’t the Earthen Ring have had time to set up portal circles in Thunder Bluff, Silvermoon, and … uh… okay, a decent distance outside the Undercity? This was even more of an annoyance on my few Alliance toons.The fact that EVERYTHING in in Stormwind was really a bummer for me when I was playing Alliance. Why? I hate that city. Hate it. Its nonsensical layout, its Generic Fantasy Town decor, Varian “the Chin” Wrynn… there’s nothing I like about Stormwind. Give me Ironforge anyday.

With the exception of 3 (which I have never had issue with), they are good suggestions. The macro thing though especially. I still am not great at creating macros, and some kind of tutorial in game or a system by which you could drag and drop abilities into a macro or similar would be great. Especially if it could highlight incorrect syntax etc i.e. the macro text is green, non working bits are red.

On #1, history teaches us that if you put portals in one city, the same exact thing will happen. People will congregate there, instead.It’s funny that they added an AH to both Dal and Shatt at the same time as they removed the portals. Here’s an AH, but, why bother?Best would be a “portal network” that would link all the major cities together, though you might have to travel through a couple to get anywhere. Examples: Shat -> Stormwind -> Darnassus, Dal -> SW -> IF. And vice-versa. Then people would perhaps choose the city they like the most over the one with all the portals. /sigh – I do miss Ironforge.

My DK has been running BC heroics and MgT, so she has her hearthstone set to Shattrath, and it’s a refreshing change of pace. In addition to less lag than Org, nothing makes my day like logging in and immediately being greeted with “IF WAR IS WHAT YOU WANT, WAR IS WHAT YOU SHALL GET, FRUIT VENDOR!”

If people will congregate in whichever city the portals are in, then surely the suggestion is as Grimmtooth said – put portals in ALL the cities. Although you’d need to do more than just that. You’d also need to ensure that there were JP and VP vendors in all cities, at least some support for Hero’s Call noticeboards in all cities, and so on through the other amenities that SW and Ogri offer and everywhere else doesn’t. I sorely wish Blizzard would do this – I’d like to live in Thunder Bluff, thanks very much, but it’s much like living in Bishop’s Storford – it’s pretty, but you’ve still got to commute to London every day to get anything done. Great post, BTW, Cynwise. It’s a bit short for us, but I liked it so much I’ve featured it on the Melting Pot today anyway – goes live in about 4 hours.

#1 I’m kind of torn about. I think keeping the portals would have kept everyone in Dal except for when they needed to get to raiding locations and/or get PVE/PVP gear. Now that Dal and Shat both have the capitals’ portals, they’re still empty because everyone has been trained to go to the capitals. Opening up to portals for all of the cities probably wouldn’t do much good now. (And my mage misses the income from when Dal and Shat had no portals, but I’m sure she’ll survive.)I doubt they’ll fix #5 as it makes money for them leaving things as they are. Think of it as the equivalent of a bank letting you refinance your mortgage loan: why would they let you refinance at a lower rate and cost them profit in lower interest rates?

Not convinced that introducing more portal travel will get people out into the world more.It would only make them jump from one city to another instead.Flying in most of the world has made personal transport easier than ever, but players are less willing then ever to use it.Cross-realm/cross game friends should have never required the RealID part in the first place.It never needed real names, and therefore would have avoided the need to change them if it was associated with a selected character instead.What I would like to see also is a per-character toggle so you can have a character to escape to without interruption. One which never shows up in RealID etc unless you opt in.

Agree partially with #1. I think they need to make it a lot easier to get from 1 major city to another, I understand they want to the world to feel big, but seriously.#2 Why the hell not allow nicknames, seems like a no brainer, or hell just our first name#4 For macros, I can usually find some good sites with up to the date info, but yeah Blizz should own that API and be the main source of info#5 I love the idea of the xp buff, since they can’t get the heirlooms on different servers, it really hampers me even wanting to level an alt on another server

About CWM

Cynwise's Warcraft Manual is a weblog about many facets of the World of Warcraft: PvP battlegrounds, digital avatars, warlock theory, and having fun with alternate play styles are common topics.